CLEVELAND - LeBron James chewed on his fingernails as he talked quietly with Mo Williams in the corner of Cleveland’s muted locker room.

As they reviewed the game’s final seconds, the two stars stared blankly at a boxscore floating in an ice tub above James’ feet.

They looked stunned. And for good reason.

No longer untested, no longer unbeaten. The Cavaliers finally met their match in the playoffs.

Dwight Howard scored 30 points, Rashard Lewis added 22 and the Orlando Magic rallied from a 15-point halftime deficit to hand James and the Cavaliers their first loss of the postseason, 107-106 on Wednesday night in the Eastern Conference finals opener.

James finished with 49 points, eight assists and six rebounds, but the league MVP limped off the floor after Cleveland’s loss — just its third in 46 home games.

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” said Cavs guard Delonte West, who missed an open 3-pointer with five seconds remaining. “This one hurts.”

Lewis made a 3-pointer with 14.7 seconds left and the Magic, who dethroned the champion Boston Celtics in seven games in the previous round, survived two shots by Cleveland in the closing seconds. Williams missed a catch-and-shoot jumper off a jump ball as the horn sounded, dropping the Cavs to 8-1 in the postseason.

“It’s a big victory,” said Howard, who broke one of the shot clocks with a dunk in the opening minutes. “We kept fighting the whole game. We kept believing we could win.”

Hedo Turkoglu scored 15 points with 14 assists for Orlando.

Game 2 is Friday night at Quicken Loans Arena, which fell eerily silent after the Magic’s win.

As fans headed to the exits, they turned to observe James still on the floor and bent over in obvious pain. He seemed to be bothered by cramps in the fourth quarter and was tended to by Cleveland’s training staff before slowly making his way to the locker room.

Perhaps the long layoff — the Cavs hadn’t played since May 11 — contributed to James not being himself at the end.

Cleveland gave this one away. The Cavaliers lost their grip on the game with a stagnant third quarter that carried into the fourth.

Orlando, which went 2-1 vs. Cleveland in the regular season, took its first lead at 85-84 with 10:06 left when Anthony Johnson buried a 3-pointer from the left corner. The bucket seemed to suck the air out of the raucous building and Cavs coach Mike Brown quickly called a timeout to stop the Magic’s run and get James back in.

The Magic, though, kept making big shots with Lewis hitting a jumper with 31.6 seconds left to give Orlando a 104-103 lead.

James then drove and scored on a runner while drawing a sixth foul on Howard, who added 13 rebounds. James completed the three-point play for a 106-104 lead but Lewis came down and nailed his 3-pointer over a closing Anderson Varejao.

Source (article): NBCSPORTS

Source (pictures): EVERYJOE, BBALLCITY

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) — The remains found in a wooded area last week in Orange County, Florida, are those of Caylee Anthony, authorities confirmed at a news conference Friday.

The announcement marks the end of a six-month search for the 2-year-old.

“It is with regret that I’m here to inform you that the skeletal remains found on December 1 are those of the missing toddler,” Orange County Medical Examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia said.

She said the cause of death was homicide, but she could not determine how Caylee was killed.

Casey Anthony, 22, faces charges including first-degree murder in the June disappearance of her daughter. Remains described as being those of a small child were found last week a half-mile from Casey Anthony’s parents’ home, in the area where a meter reader first directed police.

At Friday’s news conference, police will identify the meter reader who, they said Thursday, called the department four months ago, directing them to the site of the remains three times in August.

At a Thursday news conference, Capt. Angelo Nieves, a Sheriff’s Department commander, said investigators were looking into whether the tips, called in August 11, 12 and 13, were properly followed up.

In one of those phone calls, the meter reader reported seeing a gray bag on the side of the road, Nieves said. On August 13, a deputy responded to the site and did a “cursory search” but found nothing, Nieves said.

Nieves said police were getting more information from the tipster and the deputy who responded to the tips. He said the department was investigating the “thoroughness” of the deputy’s response but would not identify the deputy.

The meter reader “is not a suspect,” Nieves said. “He is a credible witness.”

Nieves’ latest announcement is raising questions about whether police missed several chances to find remains believed to be Caylee’s.

The meter reader is not the only one, or the first, to have pointed police toward the site containing the remains.

KioMarie Cruz, Casey Anthony’s childhood friend, also told police to investigate the same wooded area near Hidden Oaks Elementary School a month before the meter reader, according to CNN affiliate WFTV.

In an interview with detectives, according to WFTV, Cruz said that she and Anthony “pretty much used to hang out there most of our time,” would “snack on food for hours” and went there to “get away from our parents.”

The Sheriff’s Department followed up on that tip, but the wooded area was covered in floodwaters, preventing a search. Nieves said the water may have been present at the time of the meter reader’s tips as well.

Nieves also said Thursday that searchers combing the site after the skull’s discovery had found “significant skeletal remains” consistent with those of a small child on the outer perimeter of the search area.

The area will be enlarged, and processing and searching of the site will continue, probably into the weekend, he said.

Some of the remains have been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, in an effort to identify them. Authorities have said the remains are believed to be Caylee’s, but an identification is pending.

Sheriff’s spokesman Carlos Padilla said last week that authorities believe the remains are Caylee’s for three reasons: No other children have been reported missing in the area; the remains are consistent with those of a child of Caylee’s age; and the remains were found near the home of the grandparents, where the 2-year-old and her mother were living just before Caylee disappeared.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday that he did not know when tests would be complete, but an attorney for Anthony’s parents said the FBI is likely to have results “within the next week.”

Casey Anthony could face a sentence of life in prison if convicted. Prosecutors said this month that they would not seek the death penalty.

SOURCE: CNN.COM

Friday November 14th 2008 Space Shuttle Endeavor takes off from the Kennedy Space Center KSC in Cocoa Beach Florida. We shot this footage from the roof of the SODO Super Target parking garage 40 miles away from the launch site. MTC Exclusive

MUSIC: Exploration/Karminski Experience

As Joel Hunter explains it, his telephone prayer session with Barack Obama on Tuesday, roughly 10 hours before Obama was declared winner of the presidential election, was not intended to be as intimate as it ended up. Obama, says Hunter, “just wanted to pray with some folks,” and his religious liaison arranged a conference call with Hunter, Dallas Pentecostal megapastor T.D. Jakes, Houston Methodist minister (and George Bush favorite) Kirbyjon Caldwell and Otis Moss II, the retired pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland. But Obama was delayed, Jakes had to appear on live TV, and Caldwell had to board a plane, explains Hunter; so the candidate ended up praying with just Moss and Hunter.

Hunter won’t divulge the prayer’s content other than to say that Obama “trusts God and the American people and just wanted to commend himself to each.” The 60-year-old champion of what some call the New Evangelicalism also downplays the session’s possible importance for his own status, noting that Obama has always been “very good about keeping religious leaders in the loop.” Though he says he has prayed with Obama twice before, Hunter adds, “I find it hard to believe that I’m in the inner prayer circle.”

Perhaps not, but as the only white Evangelical in the prospective quartet, Hunter would be a good candidate for the next President’s bridge to white Evangelicalism, which he courted on Election Day but had only marginal success in winning over. Hunter is a bona fide megapastor in Orlando, Fla., and and a longtime mover in the Evangelical world. “For a long time now, Joel has been directly politically engaged as a Christian leader, in a nuanced and multifaceted way,” notes Andy Crouch, editor of the Vision Project at the Evangelical monthly Christianity Today. On a number of key positions, morevoer, he has shown his independence of the religious right.

Hunter shares his movement’s typical pro-life and anti-gay-marriage social commitments. But he became best known to the mainstream press in 2006 when an arrangement for him to take over as head of the Christian Coalition, the political machine founded by Pat Robertson, imploded as it became clear that Hunter intended to steer it into more moderate waters. He has since made a name (and Fundamentalist foes) combating global warming, championing comprehensive immigration reform and extolling a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Less ambiguously than any other leader (including Purpose-Driven Life author Rick Warren, who hedges more bets), Hunter is the avatar of the New Evangelicalism, which is increasingly contesting the priorities of classic religious-right figures like James Dobson. Given all this, it was not surprising that Hunter delivered the closing benediction at the Democratic Convention in August, or that he was asked to join Tuesday’s prayer circle.

Hunter says he got to know Obama last spring during a long phone conversation. During the call, Hunter made a pitch for the expansion of faith-based partnerships between government and church. Of course, says the preacher, “that was an easy sell, because [Obama] really does want to call forth the American people to do volunteer service.” He is aware that Obama’s support for faith-based projects currently includes an important post-Bush caveat: programs receiving government money can’t restrict their employees to co-religionists. Hunter opposes the restriction but maintains, “If we look hard enough, we can find suitable arrangements that really do protect both sides.” He adds, “If you don’t get into conversations that have never been entered into before, you will not win the kind of progress that has never been made before.”

In fact, Hunter, author of the book A New Kind of Conservative: Cooperation Without Compromise, sees Obama as a kindred spirit. They both, he says, believe that “people with differences working together without compromising our values or losing our distinctives is essential for progress.” Thus Hunter also plays down another potential bone of contention between the new President and Evangelicals — Obama’s July 2007 pledge to Planned Parenthood that “the first thing I’d do, as President, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” — a bill that could wipe out many of the inroads conservatives have made into strict interpretation of Roe v. Wade. “I think [the FCA] is a horrible idea,” Hunter says. “But it’s just a bill in committee,” and it would take time to reach the presidential desk. “Circumstances and constituencies evolve, so I’m not sure that a promise he made to a particular constituency some time ago will even be relevant in two years.”

That assumption might well outrage Planned Parenthood just as much as Hunter’s position on global warming has infuriated some fellow Evangelicals. But if Obama wasn’t kidding when, a few hours after praying with Hunter, he decried the “temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long,” he may find the Floridian an excellent partner in his quest.

He may also especially like part of the sermon that Hunter plans to deliver this Sunday to Northland flock. Speaking about Tuesday’s election results, Hunter will say, “God answered your prayers. If you pray, ‘God, put who you want in the White House,’ and you believe that God answers our prayers, then it is logical to assume that Barack Obama is God’s answer to our prayers.”

SOURCE: TIME/CNN

It’s 11pm, do you know where your presidential candidate is? If you’re a Democrat in Florida, the answer is likely to be yes. Approximately 35,000 voters gathered at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee on Wednesday night for a political rally featuring not only presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, but also former president Bill Clinton.

Despite previous transgressions, including Obama’s victory over Clinton’s wife for the candidacy, the former leader made it clear who his choice was come November 4. “I think it’s clear the next president of the United States should be, and with your help will be, Barack Obama,” he said.

Clinton said Obama has the right philosophy, the right policies and the intellectual heft to handle the job of president. Taking a jab at President Bush, he said the past eight years should have taught Americans “that we want a president who wants to understand and who can understand.”

Bill Clinton wasn’t the only one waving the Obama flag last night. Tens of thousands of hopefuls from across Florida came out for the event, some arriving hours beforehand in hopes of getting a good seat.

Robert Mason traveled from Atlanta to see the Democrats’ biggest stars. Mason became sold on Obama after watching him during the meltdown on Wall Street in late September. “To be that even-keel in a crisis spoke volumes,” he said. “He truly appeared presidential.”

It seems to be the general consensus of Obama supporters that “He’s someone we can believe in.”